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Latest Shelter & Rescue Articles
Scent Work Works for Shelter Dogs
Using scent work as part of enrichment programs in shelters can improve both welfare and adoption rates for dogs
by Rachel Lane
You’ve probably heard people say that when you adopt a shelter dog, you adopt problems and bring home headaches—or another version of the same sentiment. I ...
Fun Canine Nose Work in the Shelter
Congratulations to Kristin Laurene! This post won runner up in the 2022 Canine Scent Writing Competition.
It is definitely not a news flash to any dog owner that a dog’s sense of smell is its strongest. It is also not surprising to hear about dogs stuck in shelter environments getting bored ...
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Phoenix Blog Competition: Blake’s Story – Adopting a Prison Program Dog
By Rhonda York
One of the many things I get to do as a dog trainer is train inmates at the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas in tandem with the Leavenworth County Humane Society.
It helps both the residents and dogs and we work ...
Phoenix Blog Competition: Choices Matter
By Maria Zarate
As a veteran shelter professional, I’ve always sought outside the box to find effective and efficient methods to help residents skill build. Here are three “go to” methods we use regularly in the shelter environment and I ...
Phoenix Blog Competition: Traumatized Dog
By Rhonda York
Claire, an Aussie/cattle dog mix, came to live with us in May 2016. When I brought her home to foster her, I had no idea how to help her. She was completely unsocialized to humans and utterly terrified of everyone and ...
Phoenix Blog Competition: Understanding Behavior
By Kimm Hunt
In my second week as an animal control officer, a few heartbeats away from my 21st birthday, I had a rude awakening about the realities of working in animal welfare.
The incident set the course for my professional career, ...
Phoenix Blog Competition: Learning Compassion
By Charleen Cordo
For 15 years, I worked at an established training and adoption facility for shelter dogs at a facility for mentally ill youths. The dogs, who mostly came from a rural community, I felt that, judging by their behavior, had ...
Phoenix Blog Competition: Working to Address Stress
By Jerri Colonna
I am a shelter volunteer on the behavior and enrichment team at Indianapolis Animal Care Services (IACS) and we have worked very hard as volunteers to develop some great enrichment for our dogs. We are a very large inner ...
A Foot in the Door
By Tabitha Davies
Shelter is defined as a place to rest, a place for comfort and a place for safety. But with 3.9 million dogs entering shelters and an average of 1.2 million of them being euthanized each year (Source: ASPCA), this is sadly ...
Setting the Right Criteria
By K. Holden Svirsky
Guppy, a young male “pit bull” and German shepherd dog mix, didn’t know how to sit. Or, more accurately, he didn’t know how to sit on cue. To be considered adoptable by the suburban families that frequented the shelter, ...